# antirez/sds

Simple Dynamic Strings library for C

Repository: https://github.com/antirez/sds
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/sds
Language: C
License: BSD-2-Clause
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2025-04-18T10:59:31+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 40/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 17, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4591, "days_push": 502, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5545, forks 511 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:22.258740+00:00)

## What it is
SDS (Simple Dynamic Strings) is a C string library that augments libc string handling with heap-allocated, binary-safe dynamic strings using a header prefix before the returned pointer. It was extracted from Redis and offers both high-level convenience functions and low-level APIs for high-performance code.

## Use cases
- handle binary-safe strings in C
- replace error-prone C string functions with a safer dynamic string library
- build high-performance string manipulation code in C
- embed a lightweight string library in a C project
- avoid printf overhead with fast string formatting

## When to choose
- writing C code that needs dynamic, binary-safe strings
- you want strings compatible with standard C string functions
- memory efficiency and single-allocation strings matter
- you need a small, dependency-free string library

## When to avoid
- working in a language with native string types
- you need unicode-aware string operations
- binary compatibility with SDS v1 is required

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: serialization, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, programming-languages
- platform: c, cpp, cross-platform
- tags: dynamic-strings, binary-safe, c-strings, redis, memory-efficiency

## Member repositories
- antirez/sds (main) score 40

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:22.258740+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:55:41.035656+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/antirez/sds (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:22.258740+00:00, sha f23cb807f00d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.